Festival Messiaen 2025 - Conference

Description

Boulez, the birth of an indomitable musician
Listen to and meet the festival's artists at conferences and intimate concerts by the water's edge facing the glaciers of the Meije.

By Gaëtan Puaud, founder of the Festival Messiaen au Pays de la Meije.
Young Pierre was 18 when he went up from Montbrison to Paris in the autumn of 1943. He chose a master, Messiaen, and won a 1st Prize in his harmony class at the Conservatoire in 1945.
He then discovered Schoenberg and Webern through Leibowitz, who taught him the basics of twelve-tone music.
Boulez made a series of decisive encounters.
In 1946 he met Jean-Louis Barrault, who appointed him director of music for the theatre company he had just founded.
Boulez's experience of conducting an instrumental ensemble led him to become symphonic conductor of concerts of 20th-century music at the Südwestfunk orchestra in Baden-Baden.
Another encounter was with the poet René Char, who challenged him "three times": with the cantata Le Visage nuptial in 1946, Le Soleil des eaux in 1950, and the famous Marteau sans maître, premiered in 1955.